Just past noon, a fellow Digg editor mentioned in Slack that they'd received an email from a pop-up shop claiming to have authentic Fyre Festival merchandise.

...
That afternoon, we found out that another member of the Digg team received the pop-up shop email — both were contacted at their personal addresses. This, at least, piqued an intra-office mystery: why were they the only ones to receive the email? Were they, in any way, connected to the Fyre Festival fiasco?

...

This suggested another possibility: What if this pop-up shop was being run by a totally unrelated set of scammers? There were now three explanations: (1) These folks are legit, they came into possession of official Fyre-branded merch and decided to make a quick buck, (2) as suspected above, this is a sneaky way for folks behind the Festival to make money off the disaster, or (3) maybe, just maybe, the pop-up shop is a grift on a grift, peddling counterfeit Fyre merch to whoever's gullible enough to buy it. Internet sleuthing could only go so far. The only way to truly find out was to just show up at this thing, and ask around.

...

That guy identified himself as Chris. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, wearing one of the Fyre Festival shirts, normal glasses, shorts, some shoes that at least looked to be Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 V2s and a chunky wristwatch covered in diamonds.

...

A previous version of this article stated that Chris's watch was encrusted with what I guessed were Swarovski crystals. In an email Chris clarified that the base model of his watch costs approximately $30,000

When we were seated, a lot of my questions and concerns got answered. Our party sat at the 4 seats farthest down the line, but each group has their own bamboo shoot to grab noodles from, so you don't have to worry about people in front of you grabbing your food. The experience was extremely fun and surprisingly filling. The bunches of noodles come quick and often. More than enough to go around, but be prepared, because if you aren't looking or get distracted, you may miss some of your noodles that will float right past you and into the river.

The noodle bar overlooks the waterfall, with every seat facing it. You do sit on the ground, which is slightly uncomfortable. Every seat has a great view with lots to look at. It is breathtaking. The last round is pink noodles, so that's when you know the meal is over. The noodles themselves taste great. The quantity was more than enough to fill. We were all full and satisfied after the meal.

This is a must-try restaurant when visiting Kyoto. The restaurant is ~45 minutes to an hour away in Kibune, but well worth the trek.

Another early exploration for Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok. Way before the beautiful @tessamaethompson was announced so my material reference was mostly the tall blonde character from the comics. On this one I’ve used some obvious gladiator look with some J… https://t.co/kmtRovC1eupic.twitter.com/G59WIk3AKe

As Birds and comparable scooter-sharing services continue to expand, charging has become a popular way for high-schoolers, college students, and young professionals to earn easy money.

...

“It’s really fun to grab a few scooters, charge them, and in the end it pays for a fancy dinner,” Abouzeid says. “It’s like a game and I would do it even if the prices were halved, which they probably will be.”

Like Pokémon Go, when you enter “charger mode” the Bird app displays a real-time map of Birds across your area that require charging. The reward for capturing and charging these Birds can range from $5 to $20 depending on how difficult the Bird is to locate—and some can be really hard to find. Bird chargers have described finding Birds in and under trash cans, down the side of a canyon, hidden in bushes, or tossed sideways on the side of the street.

“Finding the really hard ones is so awesome,” says Lucas, a young teenage Bird charger in L.A. who didn’t want his last name or his age listed since he technically hunts under his parents’ account. “It’s become a big trend at my high school. People are like, ‘Oh are you gonna charge tonight?’ I have friends send me Snapchats like, ‘I just got 18 in one night!’

...

But while Bird hunting is fun and games for some, other chargers take the job much more seriously. Charging in some cities, like San Diego, has become a cutthroat competition between workers where every last dollar counts.

Hoarding in particular has become a problem in these crowded markets. Bird and other companies will pay a $20 reward for missing scooters, so some chargers simply keep the scooters in their garage until they’re reported missing by riders or the bounty goes up to $20, then claim the finder’s fees.

“I’ve heard various reasons as to where that [mode] came from,” Jesse Harlin, who worked on video-game music at Lucasfilm at the time, recalled. “The one that I heard most often was that Microsoft had had success with a Kinect dance game, they had licensed a number of songs for a different dance game, and then that game fell through. They had that license and they had all these songs, and they knew that that gameplay was something that worked well with the Kinect. So somebody at Microsoft made the decision that they were going to add a dance section into the game.”

...

“By the time it reached my desk,” Harlin, the music supervisor, said, “there was nobody saying, ‘Do you think this is a good idea or not?’”

About an hour after the faculty members sent the letter, board Chairman John Mork released a statement saying that while trustees were "troubled by the distressing reports" about the campus doctor, he and others on its executive committee "strongly support" Nikias.

"The executive committee of the board has full confidence in President Nikias' leadership, ethics, and values and is certain that he will successfully guide our community forward,"

"Pure Atlantic had planned to construct what would have been the world’s largest ship, some 500 metres (546 yards) long and 90 metres (98 yards) wide, to house a giant fish farm off the coast of Norway."

I just remembered I once made an account on Twitter I claimed was a "crush bot" and if you DMd it your crush, and that person also did, it would tell both of you. But it wasn't a bot, it was just me reading the DMs.

Monday, May 21, 2018

Torrential rains and abnormally warm weather have spurred a mosquito infestation that has terrorized the Voronezh region in southwest Russia.

...

Meanwhile, across the Bering Sea, Alaska’s KTVA reported the season’s first swarm was spotted near Fairbanks about 10 days ago. In Alaska, mosquitoes grow so large that locals refer to them as “the state bird”

The bathrooms in this place had such a cool idea — transparent glass that goes opaque when you lock them! Buuttttttttt they disabled it a month ago... because a sensor went bad and the glass went transparent right in the middle of someone’s journey. pic.twitter.com/HejPJ0i5z0

I bought an anemone for my clownfish to live in but instead they’re living in a random coral while a non-anemone hosting fish constantly lays in the anemone and the anemone isn’t eating him ??? pic.twitter.com/hA6lEcOpA7

The flagrant foul was committed in an annual game between the two universities in Tokyo on May 6. The Nihon University player came running from the quarterback's blindside and tackled him from behind long after he had thrown an incomplete pass.

The quarterback suffered injuries that will require three weeks of treatment.

After the late hit, which drew a flag, the Nihon University defensive player continued to commit more personal fouls before he was ejected from the game.

Sept. 30, 2016 was a big day for Lake Canyon Elementary. Students, teachers, and staff arrived at the Galt, California, school wearing white shirts and before long were sent to stand by one of six large cardboard boxes. After a drum roll, cannons sprayed confetti over each cluster of students. The color matched one of six new banners, like the orange one reading “Sebete” and featuring a bear meant to symbolize courage. As music played, the boxes were ripped open to reveal matching T-shirts. Pulling them over their heads, students began doing something they’d continue every day until graduating: representing their house. Three semesters later, Principal Judi Hayes said, “Every part of our school culture now flows through the lens of the house system.”

If the image calls to mind Harry Potter being assigned to Gryffindor, that’s not far off the mark.

Cowboys OL coach Paul Alexander wrote in his book "Perform" about how he can rule out certain offensive lineman playing for him by the way they dispense ketchup from a bottle. pic.twitter.com/zXDGT057jm

Chief of staff at Upstate Medical University not an attorney, but claims to be

...

His account of the bombing was among numerous astounding claims that he made last October during a 57-minute videotaped speech — titled "Courage Under Fire" — that have been refuted, could not be verified, or are so far-fetched that longtime State Department and other current and former U.S. government officials described them as not credible.

The questions about Garcia's background have recently stoked unrest among a few high-level members of the university's faculty, some of whom have questioned how Garcia, who has very limited experience in the hospital sector, quickly became the right hand to University President Danielle Laraque-Arena and has seen his roles expanded to include overseeing human resources and the campus police force.

if NO witches lived in swamps, we would find ourselves unable to comprehend this episode of scooby doo entirely. but that is not the case; in fact, when scrappy identifies the witch as a *swamp* witch we intuitively recognize the rightness of his judgment pic.twitter.com/L5WETnJYwY

Another early exploration for Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok. With a tribal look really different from the comic book. You know this is the early exciting steps when we can explore and pushing the boundaries. And sometimes good things come from this. Not alwa… https://t.co/lD4uRiDH6Mpic.twitter.com/sCv2Do9McT

But even after subtracting the 55 women unaccounted for on FAU’s report, the school’s numbers indicate it disproportionately gave athletic scholarship dollars to men last year, violating federal law.

...

For all its lucre, however, college football is still divided into haves and have-nots. Seventy-five FBS teams took all the profits, while the other 51 programs either broke even or lost money, Education Department reports show.

Friday, May 18, 2018

"The University of Southern California said Friday it has received about 200 reports from former patients of gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall in the wake of a Los Angeles Times investigation detailing years of misconduct complaints and is establishing a process to forward some of those accounts to the Los Angeles Police Department for criminal review."

Today, Hasbro (NASDAQ: HAS) announces that the iconic PLAY-DOH scent, known and loved by fans around the world, is officially recognized by the United States Patent and Trademark Office as a registered trademark of the brand. The trademarked scent, which Hasbro formally describes as a unique scent formed through the combination of a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough, makes the PLAY-DOH brand one of the few active and certainly most famous scent trademarks in the country.

Gates told the audience how Trump had encountered his daughter Jennifer, now 22, at a horse show in Florida. “And then about 20 minutes later he flew in on a helicopter to the same place,” the Microsoft co-founder said. “So clearly he had been driven away but he wanted to make a grand entrance in a helicopter.”

Tron (1982) was shot in black and white, sets were made of black fabric with white duct-tape for markers, the glow was later hand-painted onto every frame, imagine the work!! In this video we can see a test using a white suit with black markers for the glows pic.twitter.com/fl9U87bsBu

In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) the floating pen sequence was made by gluing the pen with transparent duct tape to a giant glass and just moving it around, camera focused on center so you can't see the edges. pic.twitter.com/1BYwRkmJOl

In Spider-Man (2002) scene where Peter Parker catches the tray and objects wasn't CGI. Tray had a sticky substance so stuff wouldn't roll when falling but Tobey Maguire had to catch them, it took 156 takes. The studio wanted this scene cut because of how long it was taking. pic.twitter.com/JZzfbjIPgc

The group in question had just come from a cruise ship, the Cornucopia Majesty, where a pair of Aston Martins were awarded to two guests through random selection — glowing bracelets were distributed at the start of the cruise, and those lucky enough to receive the bracelets that glowed the longest were gifted the sports cars.

The crowd is visiting the city to attend Consensus, the sprawling blockchain conference that has attracted nearly 8,500 people.

Between 2006 and 2014, MSU’s Chinese undergraduate enrollment skyrocketed from fewer than 100 to nearly 4,000. For a time, more Chinese undergraduates were enrolled at MSU than at any other university in the country.

Collectively, they've made a tremendous impact — culturally and financially — on MSU and in the surrounding community.

By . . . 2015, the steadily growing stream had begun to ebb. MSU had started recruiting Chinese students earlier than most, but other U.S. schools soon threw their hats in the ring. China began bolstering its own universities. More recently, the federal government has begun issuing fewer student visas.

The decline is more than an issue of demographics for MSU and the surrounding community.

Many Chinese undergraduates arrived with a lot of disposable income. Their presence created new markets for high-end apartments and luxury cars.

The Saudi government has billed the lifting of the driving ban as part of a reform push spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The changes have also included curtailing the powers of the religious authorities and expanding the entertainment options available in the conservative kingdom.

But those efforts have coincided with waves of arrests that have scooped up clerics, businessmen, members of the royal family and activists who have a history of challenging the government’s positions.

The annual raffle, which costs $150 per ticket to enter, is a benefit for the non-profit Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA). Over the past decade, the homes offered as the raffle’s grand prize form a gallery of high-end real estate in the city’s priciest neighborhoods. But KPIX 5 has learned that over 10 years of contests, not one of the posh homes have actually been awarded as prizes.

...

“It does appear this raffle is getting a reasonable return for this charity,” Borochoff said, noting the contest is perfectly legal.

Fuuuuck. Got the new French Giant Size edition of #Moebius & Lee's 'Parable'. It looks great from the outside.... but then you open it. Jesus. It's been re-coloured by a colour blind intern at Panini France. It's all wrong. Galactus is purple, right? I just don't get it. pic.twitter.com/IxkizSw2eX

The new approach marks a big cultural shift for YouTube and its parent. Google, a division of Alphabet Inc., has sustained the most popular video site and search engine in the world by prioritizing free, easy-to-use services.

“Our top priority at YouTube is to deliver a great user experience, and that includes ensuring users do not encounter excessive ad loads,” the company said. “For a specific subset of users who use YouTube like a paid music service today -- and would benefit most from additional features -- we may show more ads or promotional prompts to upsell to our paid service.”

...

They will “smoke out” people who can afford to pay for a subscription and shepherd them to the new service.

“There’s a lot more people in our funnel that we can frustrate and seduce to become subscribers,”

His senses and curiosity quickly awoke when his professor referred to the United States’ version a century ago of its own “concentration camps,” ones used in America’s case to detain and quarantine women suspected of transmitting sexual diseases. For days, weeks or months at a time, tens of thousands of suspected prostitutes and others deemed to be loose women of questionable moral character were rounded up and locked away, without due process.

The detentions included invasive, forced gynecological examinations of females as young as their early teens and painful, ineffective treatments

...

“This was all very sexist, in that any woman who might be promiscuous could be deemed a threat to national security

Red blood cells only live for four months or so, and when they die, our bodies recycle the iron within them. That process inadvertently creates a green pigment called biliverdin, which is then converted into a yellow one called bilirubin. Both of these are toxic, and our livers quickly filter them out of our blood. When you get a bruise, the unsightly green and yellow colors come from the biliverdin and bilirubin unleashed by dying red blood cells. When infants get jaundice, that’s the result of bilirubin building up before their newborn livers kick into action.

...

The lizards’ blood contains so much of the green pigment that it completely overshadows the normal red of their hemoglobin.

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